This paper provides an overview of the policies of school autonomy in Australian public education from the Karmel report in 1973 to the present day. The key focus is on the social justice implications of this reform. It tracks the tensions between policy moves to both grant schools greater autonomy and rein in this autonomy with the increasing…

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different…

In Europe and across the globe, academic freedom -- and its close relative, institutional autonomy -- find themselves increasingly under pressure. For the European University Association, it is essential to support universities as central actors in the protection and promotion of academic freedom. In this position paper, EUA offers concrete and…

Transnational collaboration between higher education institutions offers many potential benefits but effective cross-border engagement -- and developing policies to support it -- can be challenging. Based on a review of available evidence, this policy paper identifies three key challenges to effective policy making. Academics and autonomous…

The reform of school district system is an important measure in promoting the high-quality, balanced development of compulsory education, as well as promoting the modernization of regional educational governance systems and governance capabilities. China's school districts exhibit characteristics differing from Europe and the United States in…

When the Carnegie Foundation was established in 1905, universities in Canada and Newfoundland were eligible for grants, on strict conditions that were seen by some as "colonial," "continentalist," or "imperial" intrusions on autonomy; for example, a Carnegie plan to create a federation of Maritime universities. This…

The academic calendar contains national data on how the academic year is structured (beginning of the academic year, term times, holidays and examination periods). Differences between university and nonuniversity study programmes are also highlighted. The information is available for 37 countries. [For the 2021/22 report, see ED617647.]

In addition to the third edition of EUA's Autonomy Scorecard, which was published in March 2023, a series of country profiles were released between Autumn 2023 and Spring 2024. The comprehensive analysis of all indicators in these systems revealed that in some cases there was a need for a different categorisation of specific situations. While the…

In the Indian higher education (HE) setting, what 'academic freedom' of students and faculty members constitutes has not been discussed in detail. As a result, many faculty members and students have discerned 'academic freedom' as freedom from external control and influence. It is noticed that faculty members and students are often misinterpreting…

The administrative systems of universities attest to a shift towards more managerial forms of leadership. This article outlines how strategic management was introduced in Finland in the 2000s and how this led to a significant de-democratisation of the university organisations, despite academic communities' resistance and explicit preference for…

In this essay, Niels Kerssens and José van Dijck discuss the implications of platformization on the key public value of pedagogical autonomy in K-12 education. They focus on two interconnected concerns: how the integration of education into a global digital infrastructure contests the institutional pedagogical autonomy of schools and how the…

Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are among the fundamental values of higher education. In Europe, they underpin the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which was established in 1999, a decade after the launch of the profound changes in central and eastern Europe and slightly over two decades after the adoption of the Magna Charta…

Having reviewed several pieces of strategy documents, policy papers, and literature, we concluded that there is no uniform definition of either institutional autonomy or academic freedom (AF). Many different points of view determine the interpretation of these terms. Furthermore, the policymakers (e.g., governments, legislators) can ignore the…

Green sheds light onto the mercurial and ill-defined boundaries of institutional governance within China's unique system of higher education, a national system that remains misunderstood by scholars who continue to position it as little more than a research arm of the party/state. Through a synthesis of systems theory, complexity theory, and…

Agency theory is a theoretical platform used primarily to describe processes related to corporate governance. However, the theory is also being used to describe the processes associated with the functioning of the higher education system. Contractual relationships in this sector make it possible to identify the institutions that may act as either…